The fun things we do

patterns

The recommended age for perler beads are 6+ according to the packages you buy at the store. However, I feel that in a supervised setting toddlers can benefit greatly from practicing with them. It is great for fine motor, hand eye coordination, concentration, and following directions. Also, it provides for great talks about color, patterns and provides opportunities for learning new vocabulary.

Perler beads

We did this fish together as she wouldn’t have the patience to do one by herself.

I would recommend to do this in a tray of some sort as the beads do roll away easily. We love doing projects like these in her highchair 🙂

Pure concentration

She’d knock some over and I would just comment about it being OK and I’d knock some over too. I felt that this is a good way to show her that it’s not bad and not to get frustrated when some fall over.

We just went with random colors (no set pattern)

She learned a great technique of flipping the fallen ones back up on to the pegs all by herself by just experimenting. (I was working on the tail, the rest were hers.)

Almost thereThe finishing touches

All done

I didn’t let Sophia assist in the ironing process, since she had just spent a lot of time concentrating on the project. I felt that her attention span would be too short to be safe for her work with the hot iron.